Saturday in Vegas

After one of the best nights of sleep that I have had in a long, long, long time, we got up on Saturday morning and just hung out in the room.

At 10:30 Michael, Nick and my dad went downstairs to sit through the time share presentation and a bit later I went downstairs to meet my friend Sarah.

Sarah and I went to graduate school with each other.  Graduate school was six semesters, but two of those were full time internships so only four of them were spent on campus.  Sarah and I were completely inseparable during those four semesters.   We had every single class together (really, all of us in the program had all of our classes together), we hung out in the student room together in between clients, we ate lunch together at her apartment almost every day (she lived closer to campus), we studied together and we did fun stuff together on the weekends. Michael and I were already married when I was in graduate school, but I can say with certainty that I spent way more time with Sarah than I did with him.

Anyway, Sarah moved to Las Vegas to do her internships and then stayed there after.  She has been a school based speech language pathologist for the exact same amount of time that I have been a school based speech language pathologist.  The last time we saw each other was the day we graduated.

So, I was thrilled when Sarah emailed me and reminded me that she is a blog stalker, but not a blog commenter.  She had seen that I was coming to Vegas in one of my posts and wanted to get together.

First of all, she came to lunch with us at Mon Ami Gabi in the Paris Hotel.

And then, after Michael and my dad and Nick went to go get fancy man shaves and my mom went for a three mile walk, Sarah and I went back to her house.  I've been hearing about this house for 10 years and was delighted to finally be able to see it.  Oh, and meet her animals.

After the grand tour we just sat and talked.  It was wonderful.  She told me a funny story about all the broken clocks in her house so I took pictures.  You know, for blogging purposes.

At lunch we had been "talking shop" and Nick pointed out that whenever any two people that do the same thing for a living get together they spend all their time talking about and comparing their jobs.  As part of that conversation I had told Sarah about how I had recently done an activity with the kids at work where every single on of them said that you use a rake to rake garbage.  Out of curiosity I asked Spencer the same question and he did not say that a rake could be used for garbage.

In response to that story Sarah told me that she didn't rake her garbage, but she had just recently hoed her garbage.

She took me into her backyard to show me.

Hoed garbage,

and the hoe that hoed the garbage.

After we left her house Sarah took me on a thrilling tour of a Las Vegas Walmart and then took me back to the hotel. We both vowed to not let another 11 years pass before we see each other.

Later that evening we met up with my parent's friends Pete and Julie (who live in Tucson but happened to be in Las Vegas at the same time) for some cocktails at a place off the strip called The Velveteen Rabbit.

There was an entire wedding party in this little bar when we got there and they were making toasts (with a microphone!) so we thought we'd take pictures without the flash as to not visually disturb them.

Then we totally broke out the flash when the bride left.

My mom wanted me to take a picture of the menu so that we could recreate the drinks.  I had the Queens Revenge.  It was dark rum, vanilla, pumpkin spice syrup, aztec chocolate bitters, lemon and ginger beer.  It was a tasty treat.  My mom and Julie had The Ghost Next Door.  It was topped with biscotti mist.  Where does one buy biscotti mist?  And what, exactly, is biscotti mist?

After our cocktails we went back to the hotel to get ready for our big night out on the town.  Then we went down to Fremont Street in downtown.  I don't consider myself to be incredibly old and I like to think that I'm not unhip, but this area was just totally overwhelming.  There are zip lines over the street with people constantly zipping by. There are street performers.  There was a concert stage with a (loud) band playing.  There were people upon people upon people.  There was a huge cloud of cigarette smoke that followed us wherever we went.  I had a killer headache after an hour of wandering around. 

Right before dinner we went into Binion's to have our picture taken with a million dollars.

Doing "Dr. Evils One MIIIIIIIILLION Dollars."

And then it was time for our highfalutin dinner at Hugo's Cellar at the 4 Queens.  It is all about old school Las Vegas elegance.

I borrowed this picture from google, but this is the actual table where we sat.

Sorry about all the dark pictures.  It didn't feel appropriate to be flashing all over the place, even for the purposes of blogging.

There was table side salad service with customized toppings.

And sherbet to cleanse the palate between courses.

I got the beef wellington.  They know what they are doing.  It was perfect.

Michael got a steak.

My mom had a seafood trio.

Chocolate dipped strawberries, apricots and figs with whipped cream for dessert.

I got the Hugo's cappuccino.  It was basically a mug of brandy with a teeny tiny shot of espresso and milk.

My mom got a belated chocolate lava birthday cake.

Every woman at Hugo's gets a rose when they arrive.  We put ours in a wine bottle to keep them alive.

Once we got back to the hotel, totally stuffed and exhausted I thought there was no better idea in the world than taking that tub for a whirl.

Slightly edited for blogging purposes.  

And for the record, I had one sip of that glass of wine that was forced on me and then it sat there all night.